THE 

>LD MAN IN THE CORNER 
TRAVELS THE MYSTERY OF 
THE PEARL NECKLACE 
AND THE TRAGEDY 
IN BISHOP’S ROAD 


by 

BARONESS ORCZY 


NEW SjH? YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 




COPYRIGHT, 1924, 

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 
— IM¬ 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


©C1A777014 


FFB -8 i924 

//l a* § 




THE MYSTERY OF THE PEARL 


NECKLACE 



>HE Old Man in the Corner had a very curious 


theory about that mysterious affair of the 


pearl necklace, and though it all occurred a 
few years ago, I am tempted to put his deductions 
down on record, because, as far as I know, neither 
the police of this or any other country, nor the public 
have ever found a satisfactory solution for what was 
undoubtedly a strange and mystifying adventure. 

I remembered the case quite well when first he 
spoke to me about it one afternoon in what had be¬ 
come my favourite tea-haunt in Fleet Street; the only 
thing I was not quite certain of was the identity of 
the august personage to whom the pearl necklace was 
to be presented. I did know, of course, that she 
belonged to one of the reigning families of Europe 
and that she had been an active, and somewhat hot¬ 
headed and bitter opponent of the Communist move¬ 
ment in her own country, in consequence of which 
both she and her exalted husband had been the ob¬ 
ject of more than one murderous attack by the other 
side. 

It was on the occasion of the august lady’s almost 
miraculous escape from a peculiarly well-planned and 
brutal assault that a number of ladies in England 
subscribed the sum of fifteen thousand pounds for 


4 


THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


the purchase of an exquisite pearl necklace to be 
presented to her as a congratulatory gift. 

Rightly or wrongly, the donors of this princely 
gift feared that a certain well-known political organi¬ 
sation on the Continent would strive by every means 
in its power, fair or foul, to prevent this token of 
English goodwill from reaching the recipient; and 
also, as it chanced to happen, there had been during 
the past few months a large number of thefts of 
valuables on Continental railways. So it became a 
question who should be entrusted by the committee 
of subscribers with the perilous risk of taking the 
necklace over for presentation. 

Finally their choice fell upon a certain Captain 
Arthur Saunders, nephew of Sir Montague Bowden, 
who was chairman of the ladies’ committee. Cap¬ 
tain Saunders had, it seems, travelled abroad a great 
deal, and his wife was foreign—Swedish, so it was 
understood; it was thought that if he went abroad 
now, in the company of his wife, the object of their 
journey might be thought to be a visit to Mrs. 
Saunders’ relations, and the conveying of the pearl 
necklace to its destination might thus remain more 
or less a secret. 

The choice was approved of by all the committee, 
and it was decided that Captain and Mrs. Saunders 
should start by the ten a.m. train for Paris on the 
sixteenth of March. Captain Saunders was to call 
the previous afternoon at a certain bank in Charing 
Cross, where the necklace was deposited, and there 
receive it as an almost sacred trust from the hands 


MYSTERY OF THE PEARL NECKLACE 5 

of the manager. Further, it was arranged that Mrs. 
Saunders should, immediately on arrival in Paris, 
send a wire to Mrs. Berners, a great friend of hers 
who was the secretary of the committee, and, in fact, 
that she should keep the committee informed of Cap¬ 
tain Saunders’ well-being at all the more important 
points of their journey. 

And thus they started. 

But no news came from Paris on the sixteenth. 
At first no anxiety was felt on that score, everyone 
being ready to surmise that the Calais-Paris train 
had been late in, and that the Saunders had perhaps 
only barely time to clear their luggage at the Cus¬ 
toms and catch the train de luxe which would take 
them on, via Cologne, without a chance of sending 
the promised telegram. But soon after midday of 
the seventeenth, Sir Montague Bowden had a wire 
from Mrs. Saunders from Paris saying: “Arthur 
disappeared since last night. Desperately anxious. 
Pleace come at once. Have booked room for you 
here. Mary, Hotel Majestic.” 

The news was terrifying; however, Sir Montague 
Bowden, with commendable zeal, at once wired to 
Mary announcing his immediate departure for Paris, 
and as it was then too late for him to catch the after¬ 
noon Continental train, he started by the evening one, 
travelling all night and arriving at the Hotel Majestic 
in the early morning. 

As soon as he had had a bath and some break¬ 
fast, he went in search of information. He found 
that the French police already had the “affaire” in 


6 


THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


hand, but that they had not so far the slightest clue 
to the mysterious disappearance of le Capitaine 
Saunders. He found the management of the Majestic 
in a state of offended dignity, and Mrs. Saunders in 
one that verged on hysteria; but fortunately, he also 
found at the hotel a Mr. Haasberg, brother of Mrs. 
Saunders, a Swedish business man of remarkable 
coolness and clearness of judgment, who promptly 
put him “au fait” with what had occurred. 

It seems that Mr. Haasberg was settled in busi¬ 
ness in Paris, and that he had hoped to catch a 
glimpse of his sister and brother-in-law in the eve¬ 
ning of the sixteenth at the Gare du Nord on their 
way through to the East; but on that very morning 
he had received a telegram from Mary asking him to 
book a couple of rooms—a bed-room and a sitting- 
room—for one night for them at the Hotel Majestic. 
This Mr. Haasberg did, glad enough that he would 
see something more of his sister than he had been 
led to hope. 

On the afternoon of the sixteenth he was kept late 
at business, and was unable to meet the Saunders’ 
at the station, but towards nine o’clock he walked 
round to the Majestic, hoping to find them in. Their 
room was on the third floor. Mr. Haasberg went up 
in the lift, and as soon as he reached No. 301 he be¬ 
came aware of a buzz of conversation coming from 
within, which, however, ceased as soon as he had 
pushed open the door. 

On entering the room he saw that Captain Saunders 
had a visitor, a tall, thick-set man, who wore an old- 


MYSTERY OF THE PEARL NECKLACE 7 

fashioned, heavy moustache and large, gold-rimmed 
spectacles. At sight of Mr. Haasberg the man clapped 
his hat—a bowler—on his head, pulled his coat- 
collar over his ears, and with a hasty: “Well, s’long, 
old man! I’ll wait till to-morrow!” spoken with a 
strong foreign accent, he walked rapidly out of the 
room and down the corridor. 

Haasberg stood for a moment in the doorway to 
watch the disappearing personage, but he did this 
without any ulterior motive or thought of suspicion; 
then he turned back into the room and greeted his 
brother-in-law. 

Saunders seemed to Haasberg to be nervous and 
ill at ease; in response to the latter’s inquiry after 
Mary, he explained that she had remained in her 
room as he had a man to see on business. Haasberg 
made some casual remark about this visitor, and then 
Mary Saunders came in. She, too, appeared troubled 
and agitated, and as soon as she had greeted her 
brother, she turned to her husband and asked very 
eagerly: 

“Well, has he gone?” 

Saunders, giving a significant glance in Haasberg’s 
direction, replied with an obvious effort at indiffer¬ 
ence: 

“Yes, yes; he’s gone. But he said he would be 
back to-morrow.” 

At which Mary seemed to give a sigh of relief. 

Scenting some uncomfortable mystery, Haasberg 
questioned her, and also Saunders, about their visitor, 
but could not elicit any satisfactory explanation. 


8 


THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


“Oh, there is nothing mysterious about old Pas- 
quier!” was all that either of them would say. 

“He is an old pal of Arthur’s/’ Mary added lightly, 
“but he is such an awful bore that I got Arthur to 
say that I was out, so that he might get rid of him 
more quickly.” 

Somehow Haasberg felt that these explanations 
were very lame. He could not get it out of his head 
that there was something mysterious about the 
visitor, and knowing the purpose of the Saunders’ 
journey, he thought it as well to give them a very 
serious word of warning about Continental hotels 
generally, and to suggest that they should, after this 
stay in Paris, go straight through in the train de luxe 
and never halt again until the fifteen thousand pounds 
necklace was safely in the hands of the august lady 
for whom it was intended. But both Arthur and 
Mary laughed at these words of warning. 

“My dear fellow,” Arthur said, seemingly rather 
in a huff, “we are not such mugs as you think us. 
Mary and I have travelled on the Continent at least 
as much as you have, and are fully alive to the dan¬ 
gers attendant upon our mission. As a matter of fact, 
the moment we arrived, I gave the necklace in its 
own padlocked tin box, just as I brought it over from 
England, in charge of the hotel management, who 
immediately locked it up in their strong-room, so even 
if good old Pasquier had designs on it—which I can 
assure you he has not—he would stand no chance of 
getting hold of it. And now, sit down, there’s a good 
chap, and talk of something else.” 


MYSTERY OF THE PEARL NECKLACE 9 

Only half reassured, Haasberg sat down and had 
a chat. But he did not stay long. Mary was obvi¬ 
ously tired, and soon said good-night. Arthur offered 
to accompany his brother-in-law to the latter’s lodg¬ 
ings in the Rue de Moncigny. 

“I would like a walk,” he said, “before going to 
bed.” 

So the two men walked out together, and Haas¬ 
berg finally said good-night to Arthur just outside his 
own lodgings. It was then close upon ten o’clock. 
The little party had agreed to spend the next day 
together, as the train de luxe did not go until the 
evening, and Haasberg had promised to take a holi¬ 
day from business. Before going to bed he attended 
to some urgent correspondence, and had just finished 
a letter when his telephone bell rang. To his horror 
he heard his sister’s voice speaking. 

“Don’t keep Arthur up so late, Herman,” she said. 
“I am dog tired, and can’t go to sleep until he re¬ 
turns.” 

“Arthur!” he replied. “But Arthur left me at my 
door two hours ago!” 

“He has not returned,” she insisted, “and I am 
getting anxious.” 

“Of course you are; but he can’t be long now. He 
must have turned into a cafe and forgot the time. 
Do ring me up as soon as he comes in.” 

Unable to rest, however, and once more vaguely 
anxious, Haasberg went hastily back to the Majestic. 
He found Mary nearly distracted with anxiety, and 


10 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

as he himself felt anything but reassured, he did not 
know how to comfort her. 

At one time he went down into the hall to ascertain 
whether anything was known in the hotel about 
Saunders’ movements earlier in the evening; but at 
this hour of the night there was only the night porter 
and the Watchman about, and they knew nothing of 
what had occurred before they came on duty. 

There was nothing for it but to await the morning 
as calmly as possible. This was difficult enough, as 
Mary Saunders was evidently in a terrible state of 
agitation. She was quite certain that something tragic 
had happened to her husband, but Haasberg tried in 
vain to get her to speak of the mysterious visitor 
who had from the first aroused his own suspicions. 
Mary persisted in asserting that the visitor was just 
an old pal of Arthur’s and that no suspicion of any 
kind could possibly rest upon him. 

In the early morning, Haasberg went off to the 
nearest commissariat of police. They took the mat¬ 
ter in hand without delay, and within the hour had 
obtained some valuable information from the per¬ 
sonnel of the hotel. To begin with, it was established 
that at about ten minutes past ten the previous eve¬ 
ning, that is to say a quarter of an hour or so after 
Haasberg had parted from Arthur Saunders outside 
his own lodgings, the latter had returned to the Ma¬ 
jestic, and at once asked for the tin box which he 
had deposited in the bureau. There was some dif¬ 
ficulty in acceding to his request, because the clerk 
who was in charge of the keys of the strong-room 


MYSTERY OF THE PEARL NECKLACE it 


could not be found. However, M. le Capitaine was 
so insistent that search was made for the clerk, who 
presently appeared with the keys, and after the usual 
formalities, handed over the tin box to Saunders, who 
signed a receipt for it in the book. Haasberg had 
since then identified the signature, which was quite 
clear and incontestable. 

Saunders then went upstairs, refusing to take the 
lift; and five minutes later he came down again, 
nodded to the hall-porter, and went out of the hotel. 
No one had seen him since, but during the course 
of the morning, the valet on the fourth floor had 
found an empty tin box in the gentlemen’s cloak¬ 
room. This box was produced, and to her unutter¬ 
able horror, Mary Saunders recognised it as the one 
which had held the pearl necklace. 

This evidence, as it gradually came to light, was 
a staggering blow both to Mary and to Haasberg 
himself, because until this moment neither of them 
had thought that the necklace was in jeopardy; they 
both believed that it was safely locked up in the 
strong-room of the hotel. 

Haasberg now feared the worst. He blamed him¬ 
self terribly for not having made more certain of the 
mysterious visitor’s identity. He had not yet come 
to the point of accusing his brother-in-law in his mind 
of a conspiracy to steal the necklace, but frankly, at 
this stage, he did not know what to think. Saunders’ 
conduct had—to say the least—been throughout ex¬ 
tremely puzzling. Why had he elected to spend the 
night in Paris, when all arrangements had been made 


12 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


for him and his wife to travel straight through? Who 
was the mysterious visitor with the walrus moustache, 
vaguely referred to by both Arthur and Mary as “old 
Pasquier”? and, above all, why had Arthur with¬ 
drawn the necklace from the hotel strong-room where 
it was quite safe, and, with it in his pocket, walked 
about the streets of Paris at that hour of the night? 

Haasberg was quite convinced that “old Pasquier” 
knew something about the whole affair; but strangely 
enough, Mary persisted in asserting that he was quite 
harmless and an old friend of Arthur’s who was be¬ 
yond suspicion; when further pressed with questions, 
she declared that she had no idea where the man 
lodged, and that, in fact, she believed that he had 
left Paris the self-same evening en route for Brussels, 
where he was settled in business. 

Further enquiry amongst the personnel of the hotel 
revealed the fact that Captain Saunders’ visitor had 
been seen by the hall porter when he came soon after 
half-past eight, and asked whether le Capitaine 
Saunders had finished dinner; his question being an¬ 
swered in the affirmative, he went upstairs, refusing 
to take the lift. Half an hour or so later he was seen 
by one of the waiters in the lounge hurriedly crossing 
the hall, and finally by the two boys in attendance 
at the swing doors when he went out of the hotel. 
All agreed that the man was very tall, and thick-set, 
that he wore a heavy moustache and a pair of gold- 
rimmed spectacles. He had on a bowler hat and an 
overcoat with the collar pulled right up to his ears. 
The hall porter, who himself spoke English fairly 


MYSTERY OF THE PEARL NECKLACE 13 

well, was under the impression that the man was not 
English, although he made his enquiries in that lan¬ 
guage. 

In addition to all these investigations, the com- 
missaire de police, on his second visit to the hotel, 
was able to assure Haasberg that all the commis¬ 
sariats in and around Paris had been communicated 
with by telephone so as to ascertain whether any man 
answering to Saunders’ description had been injured 
during the night in a street accident, and taken in 
somewhere for shelter; also that a description of the 
necklace had already been sent round to all the 
monts-de-piete throughout the country. The police 
were also sharply on the look-out for the man with 
the walrus moustache, but so far without success. 

Mary Saunders obstinately persisted in her denial 
of any knowledge about him. “Arthur,” she said, 
“sometimes saw ‘old Pasquier’ in London, but she did 
not know anything about him, neither what his na¬ 
tionality was, nor where he lodged. She did not know 
when he had left London, nor where he could be 
found in Paris. All that she knew,” so she said, “was 
that his name was Pasquier, and that he was in busi¬ 
ness in Brussels; she therefore concluded that he was 
Belgian. 

Even to her own brother she would not say more, 
although he succeeded in making her understand how 
strange her attitude must appear both to the police 
and to her friends, and what harm she was doing to 
her husband, but at this she burst into floods of 
tears and swore that she knew nothing about Pas- 


i4 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

quier’s whereabouts, and that she believed him to be 
innocent of any attempt to steal the necklace or to 
injure Arthur. 

There was nothing more to be said for the present, 
and Haasberg sent the telegram to Sir Montague 
Bowden because he felt that someone less busy than 
himself should look after the affair, and be a com¬ 
fort to Mary, whose mental condition appeared 
pitiable in the extreme. 

It was actually while the two men were talking 
the whole case over that Haasberg received the in¬ 
timation from the police that they believed the miss¬ 
ing man had been found; at any rate, would monsieur 
give himself the trouble to come round to the com¬ 
missariat at once. This, of course, Haasberg did, 
accompanied by Sir Montague, and at the commis¬ 
sariat, to their horror, they found the unfortunate 
Saunders in a terrible condition. 

Briefly the commissaire explained to them that 
about a quarter past ten last night an agent de police 
making his rounds saw a man crouching in the angle 
of a narrow blind alley that leads out of the Rue de 
Moncigny. On being shaken up by the agent, the 
man struggled to his feet, but he appeared quite dazed 
and unable to reply to any questions that were put 
to him. He was then conveyed to the nearest com¬ 
missariat, where he spent the night. 

He was obviously suffering from loss of memory, 
and could give no account of himself, nor were any 
papers of identification found upon him, not even a 
visiting card; but close beside him, on the pavement 


MYSTERY OF THE PEARL NECKLACE 15 

where he was crouching, the agent had picked up a 
handkerchief which was saturated with chloroform. 
The handkerchief bore the initials A. S. The man, 
of course, was Arthur Saunders. What had happened 
to him it was impossible to ascertain. He certainly 
did not appear to be physically hurt, although from 
time to time, when Mr. Haasberg or Sir Montague 
tried to question him, he passed his hand across the 
back of his head, and an expression of pathetic puz¬ 
zlement came into his eyes. 

His two friends, after the usual formalities of 
identification, were allowed to take him back to the 
Hotel Majestic, where he was restored to the arms 
of his anxious wife. The English doctor, hastily sum¬ 
moned, could not find any trace of injury about the 
body, only the head appeared rather tender when 
touched. The doctor’s theory was that Saunders had 
probably been sandbagged first, and then rendered 
more completely insensible by means of the chloro¬ 
formed handkerchief, and that excitement, anxiety, 
and the blow on the head had caused temporary loss 
of memory, which quietude and good nursing would 
soon put right. 

In the meanwhile, of the fifteen thousand pounds 
necklace there was not the slightest trace. 

Unfortunately, the disappearance of so valuable a 
piece of jewellery was one of those cases that could 
not be kept from public knowledge, and the conster¬ 
nation—not to say the indignation—amongst the 
good ladies who had subscribed the money for the gift 
to the august lady was unbounded. 


16 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


Everybody was blaming everybody else; the choice 
of Captain Saunders as the accredited messenger was 
now severely criticised; pointed questions were asked 
as to his antecedents, as to his wife’s foreign rela¬ 
tions, and it was soon found that very little was known 
about either. 

Of course, everybody knew that he was Sir Mon¬ 
tague Bowden’s nephew, and that, thanks to his 
uncle’s influence, he had obtained a remunerative and 
rather important post in the office of one of the big 
insurance companies. But what his career had been 
before that no one knew. Rather tardily the com¬ 
mittee was taken severely to task for having entrusted 
so important a mission to a man who was either a 
coward or a thief, or both; for at first no one 
doubted that Saunders had met a confederate in 
Paris and had handed over the necklace to him, 
whilst he himself enacted a farce of being waylaid, 
chloroformed and robbed, and subsequently of losing 
his memory. 

In the meanwhile the police in England had, of 
course, been communicated with by their French 
confreres, but before they could move in the matter, 
or enjoin discretion on all concerned, an enterprising 
young man on the staff of the Express Post had inter¬ 
viewed Miss Elizabeth Spicer, who was the parlour¬ 
maid at the Saunders’ flat in Sloane Street. 

That young lady, it seems, had something to say 
about a gentleman named Pasquier, who was not an 
infrequent visitor at the flat. She described him as 
a fine, tall gentleman, who wore large gold-rimmed 


MYSTERY OF THE PEARL NECKLACE 17 

spectacles, and a full military moustache. It seems 
that the last time Miss Elizabeth saw him was two 
days before her master and mistress’ departure for 
abroad. Mr. Pasquier called late that evening and 
stayed till past ten o’clock. When Elizabeth was 
rung for in order to show him out, he was saying 
good-bye to the captain in the hall, and she heard him 
say, “in his funny foreign way,” as she put it: 

“Well, I shall be in Paris as soon as you. Tink 
it over, my friend.” 

And on the top of that came a story told by Henry 
Tidy, Sir Montague Bowden’s butler. According to 
him, Captain Saunders called at Sir Montague Bow¬ 
den’s house in Lowndes Street in the afternoon of the 
fifteenth. The two gentlemen remained closeted to¬ 
gether in the library for nearly an hour, when Tidy 
was summoned to show the visitor out. Sir Mon¬ 
tague, it seems, went to the front door with his 
nephew, and as the latter finally wished him good¬ 
bye, Sir Montague said to him: 

“My dear boy, you can take it from me that there’s 
nothing to worry about, and, in any case, I am afraid 
that it is too late to make any fresh arrangements.” 

“It’s because of Mary,” the captain rejoined. “She 
has made herself quite ill over it.” 

“The journey will do her good,” Sir Montague 
went on pleasantly. “But if I were you I would have 
a good talk with your brother-in-law. He must know 
his Paris well. Take my advice and spend the night 
at the Majestic. You can always get rooms there.” 

This conversation Tidy heard quite distinctly, and 


i8 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

he related the whole incident both to the journalist 
and to the police. After that the amateur investi¬ 
gators of crime were divided into two camps; there 
were those who persisted in thinking that Pasquier 
and Saunders, and probably Mrs. Saunders also, had 
conspired together to steal the necklace, and that 
Saunders had acted the farce of being waylaid and 
robbed, and losing his memory; they based their de¬ 
duction on Elizabeth Spicer’s evidence and on Mary 
Saunders’s extraordinary persistence in trying to shield 
the mysterious Pasquier. 

Other people, getting hold of Henry Tidy’s story, 
deduced from it that it was indeed Sir Montague 
Bowden who had planned the whole thing in con¬ 
junction with Haasberg, since it was he who had per¬ 
suaded Saunders to spend the night in Paris, thus 
giving his accomplice the opportunity of assaulting 
Saunders and stealing the necklace. To these wise¬ 
acres “old Pasquier” was indeed a harmless old pal 
of Arthur’s, whose presence that evening at the Ma¬ 
jestic was either a fable invented by Haasberg, or 
one quite innocent in purpose. In vain did Sir Mon¬ 
tague try to explain away Tidy’s evidence. Arthur, 
he said, had certainly called upon him that last after¬ 
noon, but what he seemed worried about was his 
wife’s health; he feared that she would not be strong 
enough to undertake the long journey without a 
break, so Sir Montague advised him to spend the 
night in Paris, and, in any case, to talk the matter 
over with Mary’s brother. 

The conversation overheard by Tidy could cer- 


MYSTERY OF THE PEARL NECKLACE 19 

tainly admit of this explanation, but it did not satisfy 
the many amateur detectives who preferred to see a 
criminal in the chairman of the committee, rather than 
a harmless old gentleman, as eager as themselves to 
find a solution to the mystery. And while people 
argued and wrangled there was no news of the neck¬ 
lace, and none of the man with the walrus moustache. 
His disappearance certainly bore out the theory of his 
being the guilty party with the connivance of Saun¬ 
ders, as against the Bowden-Haasberg theory. 

Captain Saunders was said to be slowly recovering 
from his loss of memory and subsequent breakdown. 
Every one at home was waiting to hear what explana¬ 
tion he would give of his amazing conduct in taking 
the necklace out of the hotel strong-room late that 
night and sallying forth with it into the streets of 
Paris at that hour. The explanation came after about 
a fortnight of suspense in a letter from Mary to her 
friend Mrs. Berners. 

Arthur, she said, had told her that on the fateful 
evening, after he parted from Mr. Haasberg in the 
Rue de Moncigny, he had felt restless and anxious 
about what the latter had told him on the subject 
of foreign hotels, and he was suddenly seized with 
the idea that the necklace was not safe in the care 
of the management of the Majestic, because there 
would come a moment when he would have to claim 
the tin box, and this would probably be handed over 
to him when the hall of the hotel was crowded, and 
the eyes of expert thieves would then follow his every 
movement. Therefore he went back to the hotel, 


20 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


claimed the tin box, and as the latter was large and 
cumbersome he got rid of it in one of the cloak-rooms 
of the hotel, slipped the necklace, in its velvet case, 
in the pocket of his overcoat, and went out with the 
intention of asking Haasberg to take care of it for 
him, and only to hand it back to him when on the 
following evening the train de luxe was on the point 
of starting. He had been in sight of Haasberg’s lodg¬ 
ings when, without the slightest warning, a dull blow 
on the back of his head, coming he knew not whence, 
robbed him of consciousness. 

This explanation, however, was voted almost unani¬ 
mously to be very lame, and it was, on the whole, 
as well that the Saunders had decided to remain 
abroad for a time. The ladies especially—and above 
all those who had put their money together for the 
necklace—were very bitter against him. On the other 
hand Sir Montague Bowden was having a very rough 
time of it; he had already had one or two very un¬ 
pleasant word-tussles with some outspoken friends of 
his, and there was talk of a slander action that would 
certainly be a cause celebre when it came on. 

Thus the arguments went on in endless succession 
until one day—well do I remember the excitement 
that spread throughout the town as soon as the inci¬ 
dent became known—there was a terrible row in one 
of the big clubs in Piccadilly. Sir Montague Bowden 
was insulted by one of his fellow members; he was 
called a thief, and asked what share he was getting 
out of the sale of the necklace. It was a terrible 


MYSTERY OF THE PEARL NECKLACE 21 


position for Sir Montague, for he realised that he had 
practically no friends who would stand by him in the 
dispute. Some of the members tried to stop the row, 
and others appeared indifferent, but no one sided 
with him. 

It was in the very midst of this most unedifying 
scene—one perhaps unparalleled in the annals of 
London club-life—that a servant entered the room, 
and handed a telegram to Sir Montague Bowden. 

It had been sent to Sir Montague’s private house 
in Lowndes Street, his secretary had opened it and 
sent it on to the club. 

The telegram had come all the way from the other 
end of Europe, and had been sent by the august lady 
in whose hands the priceless necklace, about which 
there was so much bother in England and France, 
had just been safely placed. It ran thus: 

“Deeply touched by exquisite present just received 
through kind offices of Captain Saunders from Eng¬ 
lish ladies. Kind thoughts and beautiful necklace 
equally precious. Kindly convey my grateful thanks 
to all subscribers.” 

Having read out the telegram, Sir Montague Bow¬ 
den demanded an apology from those who had im¬ 
pugned his honour, and I understand that he got an 
unqualified one. After that tongues were let loose; 
the wildest conjectures flew about as to the probable 
solution of what appeared a more curious mystery 


22 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

than ever. By evening the papers had got hold of 
the incident, and all those who were interested in the 
affair shook their heads and looked portentously wise. 

But the hero of the hour was certainly Captain 
Saunders. From having been voted either a knave or 
a fool, or both, he was declared all at once to be pos¬ 
sessed of all the qualities which had made England 
great—prudence, astuteness, and tenacity. Captain 
and Mrs. Saunders arrived in England a few days 
later; everyone was agog with curiosity, and the poor 
things had hardly stepped out of the train before 
they were besieged by newspaper men, and pressed 
with questions. 

The next morning the Express Post and the Daily 
Thunderer came out with exclusive interviews with 
Captain Saunders, who had made no secret of the 
extraordinary adventure which had once more placed 
him in possession of the necklace. It seems that he 
and his wife, on coming out of the Madeleine Church 
on Easter Sunday, were hustled at the top of the 
steps by a man whose face they did not see, and who 
pushed past them very hastily and roughly. Arthur 
Saunders at once thought of his pockets, and looked 
to see if his notecase had not disappeared. To his 
boundless astonishment his hand came in contact 
with a long, hard parcel in the outside pocket of his 
overcoat, and this parcel proved to be the velvet case 
containing the missing necklace. 

Both he and his wife were flabbergasted at this dis¬ 
covery, and scarcely believing in this amazing piece 
of good luck, they managed, with the help of Mr. 


MYSTERY OF THE PEARL NECKLACE 23 

Haasberg, despite its being Easter Sunday, to obtain 
an interview with one of the great jewellers in the 
Rue de la Paix, who, well knowing the history of the 
missing necklace, was able to assure them that they 
had indeed been lucky enough to regain possession 
of their treasure. That same evening they left by 
the train de luxe, having been fortunate enough to 
secure seats; needless to say that the necklace was 
safely stowed away inside Captain Saunders’ breast¬ 
pocket. 

All was indeed well that ended so well. But the 
history of the disappearance and reappearance of the 
pearl necklace has remained a baffling mysetry to this 
day. Neither the Saunders nor Mr. Haasberg ever 
departed one iota from the circumstantial story which 
they had originally told, and no one ever heard an¬ 
other word about the man with the walrus mous¬ 
tache and the gold-rimmed spectacles; the French 
police are still after him in connection with the assault 
on le Capitaine Saunders, but no trace of him was 
ever found. 

To some people this was a conclusive proof of 
guilt, but then, having stolen the necklace, why should 
he have restored it? There never could be any dif¬ 
ficulty for an expert thief to dispose of the pearls to 
Continental dealers. The same argument would, of 
course, apply to Mr. Haasberg, whom some wiseacres 
still persisted in accusing. And there always remained 
the unanswered question: why did Saunders take the 
pearls out of the strong-room, and where was he tak¬ 
ing them to, when he was assaulted and robbed? 


24 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

Did the man with the walrus moustache really call 
at the Majestic that night? And if he was innocent, 
why did he disappear? Why, why, why? 

The case had very much interested me at the time, 
but the mystery was a nine days’ wonder as far as 
I was concerned, and soon far more important mat¬ 
ters than the temporary disappearance of a few rows 
of pearls occupied public attention. 

It was really only last year, when I renewed my 
acquaintance with the Old Man in the Corner, that 
I bethought myself once more of the mystery of the 
pearl necklace, and I felt the desire to hear what the 
spook-like creature’s theory was upon the subject. 

“The pearl necklace,” he said, with a cackle. “Ah, 
yes! It caused a good bit of stir in its day. But 
people talked such a lot of irresponsible nonsense 
that thinking minds had not a chance of arriving at 
a sensible conclusion.” 

“No,” I rejoined amiably. “But you did.” 

“Yes, you are right there!” he replied. “I knew 
well enough where the puzzle lay, but it was not my 
business to put the police on the right track. And if 
I had, I should have been the cause of making two 
innocent and clever people suffer more severely than 
the guilty party.” 

“Will you condescend to explain?” I asked, with 
an indulgent smile. 

“Why should I not?” he retorted. And once again 
his thin fingers started to work on the inevitable piece 
of string. “It all lies in a nutshell, and is easily un¬ 
derstandable if we realise that ‘old Pasquier,’ the man 


MYSTERY OF THE PEARL NECKLACE 25 

with the walrus moustache, was not the friend of the 
Saunders, but their enemy.” 

I frowned. 

“Their enemy!” 

“An old pal, shall we say?” he retorted, “who knew 
something in the past history of one or the other of 
them that they did not wish their newest friends to 
know; really a blackmailer who, under the guise of 
comradeship, sat not infrequently at their fireside 
watching an opportunity for extorting a heavy price 
for his silence and his good-will. Thus he could worm 
himself into their confidence; he knew their private 
life; he heard about the necklace, and decided that 
here was the long-sought-for opportunity at last. 

“Think it all over and you will see how well the 
pieces of that jig-saw puzzle fit together and make a 
perfect picture. Pasquier calls on the Saunders a day 
or two before their departure and springs his infamous 
proposal upon them then. For the time being, Arthur 
succeeds in giving him the slip: ‘his journey is not yet 
. . . the necklace is not yet in his possession . . .’ 
but he knows the true quality of the blackmailer now, 
and he is on the alert. 

“He begins by going to Sir Montague Bowden and 
begging him to entrust the mission to somebody else. 
Judging by the butler’s evidence, he even makes a 
clean breast of his troubles to Sir Montague, who, 
however, makes light of them and advises consulta¬ 
tion with Mr. Haasberg, who, perhaps, would under¬ 
take the journey. In any case, it is too late to make 
fresh arrangements at this hour. Very reluctantly 


26 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


now, and hoping for the best, the Saunders make a 
start. But the blackmailer, too, is on the alert; he 
has succeeded in spying upon them, and in tracing 
them to the Majestic in Paris. The situation now has 
become terribly serious, for the blackmailer has 
thrown off the mask and demands the necklace under 
threats which apparently the Saunders did not dare 
defy. 

“But they are both clever and resourceful, and as 
soon as Haasberg’s arrival rids them temporarily of 
their tormentor, they put their heads together and 
invent a plot which was destined to free them for ever 
from the threats of Pasquier, and at the same time 
would enable them to honour the trust which had been 
placed in them by the committee. In any case, they 
had until the morrow to make up their minds. Re¬ 
member the words which Mr. Haasberg overheard on 
the part of Pasquier: ‘S’long, old man. I’ll wait till 
to-morrow!’ Anyway, Pasquier must have gone off 
that evening confident that he had Captain Saunders 
entirely in his power, and that the wretched man 
would on the morrow hand over the necklace without 
demur. 

“But what happened? Arthur having parted from 
his brother-in-law, went back to the hotel, took the 
necklace out of the strong-room, and then left it in 
Mary’s charge. He threw the tin box away, where it 
would surely be found again. Then he went as far 
as the Rue de Moncigny and crouched, seemingly 
unconscious, in the blind alley, having previously 


MYSTERY OF THE PEARL NECKLACE 27 

taken the precaution of saturating his handkerchief 
with chloroform. 

“Thus the two clever conspirators cut the ground 
from under the blackmailer’s feet, for the latter now 
had the police after him for an assault which he 
might find very difficult to disprove, even if he cleared 
himself of the charge of having stolen the necklace. 
Anyway, he would remain a discredited man, and his 
threats would in the future be defied, because if he 
dared come out in the open after that, public feeling 
would be so bitter against him for a crime which he 
had not committed, that he would never be listened 
to if he tried to do Captain Saunders an injury. And 
it was with a view of keeping public indignation at 
boiling pitch against the supposed thief that the 
Saunders kept up the comedy for so long. To my 
mind, that was a very clever move. Then they came 
out with the story of the restoration of the necklace 
and became the heroes of the hour. 

“Think it over/’ the funny creature went on, as he 
finally stuffed his bit of string back into his pocket 
and rose from the table. “Think it over, and you 
will realise at once that everything happened just as 
I have related, and that it is the only theory that fits 
in with the facts that are known; you’ll also agree 
with me, I think, that Captain and Mrs. Saunders 
chose the one way of ridding themselves effectually 
of a dangerous blackmailer. 

“But it was a curious case.” 



THE MYSTERY OF THE 
TRAGEDY IN BISHOP’S ROAD 



HE Old Man in the Corner was in a philoso¬ 


phising mood that afternoon, and all tlje 


while that his thin, clawlike fingers fidgeted 
with the inevitable piece of string, he gave vent to 
various disjointed, always sententious, remarks. 

Suddenly he said: 

“We know, of course, that the world has gone danc¬ 
ing mad! But I doubt if the fashionable craze has 
ever been responsible before for so dark a tragedy as 
the death of old Sarah Levison. What do you 
think?” 

“I suppose it is all quite clear to you?” I countered, 
with what I meant to be withering sarcasm. 

“As clear as the proverbial daylight,” he replied, 
undaunted. 

“You know how old Mrs. Levison came by her 
death?” 

“Of course I do. I will tell you, if you like.” 

“By all means. But I am not prepared to be con¬ 
vinced,” I added cautiously. 

“Well, then, do you remember all the personages 
in the drama?” he began. 

“I think so.” 

“There were, of course, young Aaron Levison and 
his wife Rebecca; the latter young, pretty, fond of 


TRAGEDY IN BISHOP’S ROAD 


29 


pleasure, and above all of dancing; and he, a few 
years older, but still in the prime of life, more of an 
athlete than a business man, and yet tied to the shop 
in which he carried on the trade of pawnbroking for 
his mother. The latter, an old Jewess, shrewd and 
dictatorial, was the owner of the business; her son 
was not even her partner, only a well-paid clerk in 
her employ, and this fact we must suppose rankled 
in the mind of her smart daughter-in-law. At any 
rate, we know that there was no love lost between 
the two ladies; but the young couple and old Mrs. 
Levison and another unmarried son lived together in 
the substantial house over the shop in Bishop’s 
Road. They had three servants, and we are told that 
they lived well, old Mrs. Levison bearing the bulk 
of the cost of housekeeping. 

“The younger son, Reuben, seems to have been 
something of a bad egg; he held at one time a clerk¬ 
ship in a bank, but was dismissed for insobriety and 
laziness; then after the war he was supposed to have 
bad health consequent on exposure in the trenches, 
and had not done a day’s work since he was de¬ 
mobilised. But in spite, or perhaps because of this, 
he was very markedly his mother’s favourite. 

“What money Reuben extracted out of his mother 
he would spend on amusements, and his sister-in-law 
was always ready to accompany him. It was either 
the cinema or dancing—oh, dancing above all! Re¬ 
becca Levison was, it seems, a beautiful dancer, and 
night after night she and Reuben would go to one 
or other of the halls or hotels where dancing was 


30 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

going on, and often they would not return until the 
small hours of the morning. 

“Aaron Levison was indulgent and easy-going 
enough where his young wife was concerned; he 
thought that she could come to no harm while 
Reuben was there to look after her. But old Mrs. 
Levison, with the mistrust of her race for everything 
that is frivolous and thriftless, thought otherwise. 
She was convinced in her own mind that her beloved 
Reuben was being led astray from the path of virtue 
by his brother’s wife, and she appears to have taken 
every opportunity to impress her thoughts and her 
fears upon the indulgent husband. 

“It seems that one of the chief bones of conten¬ 
tion between the old and the young Mrs. Levison 
was the question of jewellery. Old Mrs. Levison 
kept charge herself of all the articles of value that 
were pawned in the shop, and every evening after 
business hours Aaron would bring up all bits of 
jewellery that had been brought in during the day, 
and his mother would lock them up in a safe that 
stood in her room close beside her bed. The key of 
the safe she always carried about with her. For the 
most part these bits of jewellery consisted of cheap 
rings and brooches, but now and again some impov¬ 
erished lady or gentleman would bring more valuable 
articles along for the purpose of raising a temporary 
loan upon them, and at the time of the tragedy there 
were some fine diamond ornaments reposing in the 
safe in old Mrs. Levison’s room. 

“Now, young Mrs. Levison had more than once 


TRAGEDY IN BISHOP’S ROAD 


3i 


suggested that she might wear some of this fine 
jewellery when she went out to balls and parties. She 
saw no harm in it, and neither for the matter of that 
did Reuben. Why shouldn’t Rebecca wear a few 
ornaments now and again if she wanted to? They 
would always be punctually returned, of course, and 
they could not possibly come to any harm. But the 
very suggestion of such a thing was anathema to the 
old lady, and in her flat refusal ever to gratify such 
a senseless whim she had the whole-hearted support 
of her eldest son; such a swerving from traditional 
business integrity was not to be thought of in the 
Levison household. 

“On that memorable Saturday evening young Mrs. 
Levison was going with her brother-in-law to one of 
the big charity balls at the Kensington Town Hall, 
and her great desire was to wear for the occasion a 
set of diamond stars, which had lately been pledged 
in the shop, and which were locked up in the old 
lady’s safe. Of course, Mrs. Levison refused, and it 
seems that the two ladies very nearly came to blows 
about this, the quarrel being all the more violent as 
Reuben hotly sided with his sister-in-law against his 
mother. 

“What, then, was the position in the Levison house¬ 
hold on the day of the mysterious tragedy?” the Old 
Man in the Corner went on presently; “an armed 
truce between the two ladies; the lovely Rebecca 
sore and defiant, pining to gratify a whim which was 
being denied her; and old Mrs. Levison more bitter 
than usual against her, owing to Reuben’s partisan- 


32 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

ship. Egged on by Rebecca, he was furious with his 
mother, and vowed that he was sick of the family, 
and meant to leave home in order to be free to lead 
his own life, and so on. It was all talk-talk, of course, 
as he was entirely dependent on his mother, but it 
went to show the ugliness of his temper and the domi¬ 
nation which his brother’s wife exercised over him. 
Aaron, on the other hand, took no part in the quarrel, 
but the servants remarked that he was unwontedly 
morose all day, and that his wife was very curt and 
disagreeable with him. 

“Nothing, however, of any importance occurred 
during the day until the hour of dinner, which as 
usual was served in the parlour at the back of the 
shop at seven o’clock. It seems that as soon as the 
family sat down to their meal, there was another 
violent quarrel on some subject or other between the 
two ladies, Rebecca being hotly backed up by Reuben, 
and Aaron taking no part in the discussion; in the 
midst of the quarrel, and following certain highly 
offensive words spoken by Reuben, old Mrs. Levison 
got up abruptly from the table, and went upstairs to 
her own room, which was immediately overhead, at 
the back of the house, next to the drawing-room; nor 
did she come downstairs again that evening. 

“At half-past nine the three servants went up to 
bed according to the rule of the house. Old Mrs. 
Levison, who was a real autocrat in the management 
of the household, expected the girls to be down at 
six every morning, but they were free to go to bed 


TRAGEDY IN BISHOP'S ROAD 


33 

as soon as their work was done, and half-past nine 
was their usual time. 

“Two of the girls slept at the top of the house, and 
the housemaid, Ida Griggs by name, who also acted 
as a sort of maid to old Mrs. Levison, occupied a 
small slip room on the half-landing immediately above 
the old lady’s bed-room. On the floor above this 
there was a large bed-room at the back, and a bath¬ 
room and dressing-room in front, all occupied by Mr. 
and Mrs. Aaron, and over that the two maids’ room, 
and one for Mr. Reuben, and a small spare room in 
which Mr. Aaron would sleep now and again when 
his wife was likely to be out late and he did not want 
to get his night’s rest broken by her home-coming; 
or if he himself was going to be late home on a holi¬ 
day night after one of those country excursions on his 
bicycle of which he was immensely fond, and in which 
he indulged himself from time to time. 

“On this fateful Saturday evening Aaron was kept 
late in the shop, but he finally went up to bed soon 
after ten, after he had seen to all the doors below 
being bolted and barred, with the exception of the 
front door which had to be left on the latch, Mrs. 
Aaron having the latchkey. Thus the house was shut 
up and everyone in bed by half-past ten. 

“In the meanwhile, the lovely Rebecca and Reuben 
had dressed and gone to the ball. 

“The next morning, at a little before six, Ida 
Griggs, the housemaid, having got up and dressed, 
prepared to go downstairs; but when she went to open 


34 


THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


her bed-room door she found it locked—locked on the 
outside. At first she thought that the other girls were 
playing her a silly trick, and presently, hearing the 
patter of their feet on the stairs, she pounded against 
thme door with her fists. It took the others some 
time to understand what was amiss, but at last they 
did try the lock on the outside, and found that the 
key had been turned and that Ida was indeed 
locked in. 

“They let her out, and for the moment it did not 
seem to strike any of the girls that this locking of a 
door from the outside had a sinister significance. Any¬ 
way, they all went down into the kitchen, and Ida 
prepared old Mrs. Levison’s early cup of tea. This 
she had to take up every morning at half-past six; 
on this occasion she went up as usual, knocked at 
her mistress’ door, and waited to be let in, as the old 
lady always slept behind locked doors. But no sound 
came from within, though Ida knocked repeatedly, 
and loudly called her mistress by name. 

“Soon she started screaming, and her screams 
brought the household together; the two girls came 
up from the kitchen, Mr. Aaron came down from the 
top floor brandishing a poker, and presently Mrs. 
Aaron opened her door and came down clad in a 
filmy and exquisite nightgown, her eyes still heavy 
with sleep, and her beautiful hair streaming down her 
back. 

“Mr. Aaron, genuinely alarmed, glued his ear to 
the keyhole, but not a sound could he hear. Behind' 
that locked door absolute silence reigned. Fearing 


TRAGEDY IN BISHOP’S ROAD 


35 

the worst, he set himself the task of breaking open 
the door, which after some effort and the use of the 
poker he succeeded in doing, and here the sight that 
met his eyes filled his soul with horror, for he saw 
his mother lying on the floor of her bed-room in a 
pool of blood. 

“Evidently an awful crime had been committed. 
The unfortunate woman was fully dressed, as she had 
been on the evening before; the door of the safe was 
open, with the key still in the lock, but no other piece 
of furniture appeared to be disturbed; the one win¬ 
dow of the room was wide open, and the one door 
had been locked on the inside; the other door, the 
one which gave on the front drawing-room, being per¬ 
manently blocked by a heavy wardrobe; and below 
the open window the bunch of creepers against the 
wall was all broken and torn, showing plainly the way 
that the miscreant had escaped. 

“After a few moments of awe-stricken silence Aaron 
Levison regained control of himself, and at once tele¬ 
phoned, first for the police and then for the doctor, 
but he would not allow anything in the room to be 
touched, not even his mother’s dead body. 

“For this precaution he was highly commended by 
the police inspector, who presently appeared upon 
the scene, accompanied by a constable and the divi¬ 
sional surgeon. The latter proceeded to examine the 
body. He stated that there had been an attempt to 
strangle the old woman, the marks of fingers being 
clearly visible round her throat; in her struggle for 
freedom she must have fallen backwards, and in so 


36 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

doing struck her head against the corner of the mar¬ 
ble washstand, which fractured her skull, causing her 
death. 

“Meanwhile the inspector had been examining the 
premises; he found that the back door, which gave 
on the yard and the one that gave on the front area 
were barred and locked, just as Mr. Aaron had left 
them before he went up to bed the previous night; 
on the other hand the front door was still on the 
latch, young Mrs. Levison having apparently failed 
to bolt it when she came home from the ball. 

“In the backyard the creeper against the wall below 
the window of Mrs. Levison’s room was certainly 
torn. The miscreant had undoubtedly made his 
escape that way—but he could not have got up to 
the window, save with the aid of a ladder. The 
creeper was too slender to have supported any man’s 
weight, and the brick wall of the house offered no 
kind of foothold, even to a cat. The yard itself was 
surrounded on every side by the backyards of con¬ 
tiguous houses, and against the dividing walls there 
were clumps of Virginia creeper and anaemic shrubs 
such as are usually found in London backyards. 

“Now neither on those walls nor on the creepers 
and shrubs was there the slightest trace of a ladder 
being dragged across, or even of a man having climbed 
the walls or slung a rope over; there was not a twig 
of shrub broken or a leaf of creeper disturbed. 

“With regard to the safe, it must either have been 
open at the time that the murderer attacked Mrs. 
Levison, or he had found the key and opened the safe 


TRAGEDY IN BISHOP’S ROAD 


37 


after he had committed that awful crime. Certainly 
the contents did not appear to have been greatly dis¬ 
turbed; no jewellery or other pledged goods of value 
were missing. Mr. Aaron could verify this by his 
books. But whether his mother had any money in 
the safe he was not in a position to say. 

“Whether robbery had been the motive for the 
crime or its corollary, only subsequent investigation 
would reveal; for the moment the inspector contented 
himself with putting a few leading questions to the 
various members of the household, and subsequently 
questioning the neighbours. The public, of course, 
was not to know what the result of these preliminary 
investigations were, but the midday papers were in a 
position to assert that no one, with perhaps the ex¬ 
ception of Ida Griggs, had seen or heard anything 
alarming during the night, and that the most minute 
inquiries in the neighbourhood failed to bring forth 
the slightest indication of how the murderer effected 
an entrance into the house. 

“The papers were also able to state that young 
Mrs. Levison returned from the ball in the small hours 
of the morning, but that Mr. Reuben Levison did not 
sleep in the house at all that night. 

“I should indeed have been bitterly disappointed 
had circumstances prevented me from attending that 
particular inquest. From the first, one was conscious 
of an atmosphere of mystery that hung over the events 
of that night in the Bishop’s Road household; here, 
indeed, was no ordinary crime; the motive for it was 
still obscured, and one instinctively felt that some- 


38 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

where in this vast City of London there lurked a 
criminal of no mean intelligence who would probably 
remain unpunished. 

“Even the evidence of the police was not as un¬ 
interesting as it usually is, because it established be¬ 
yond a doubt that this was not a case of common 
burglary and housebreaking. Certainly the open win¬ 
dow and the torn creeper suggested that the miscreant 
had made his escape that way, but how he effected 
an entrance into Mrs. Levison’s room remained an 
unsolved riddle. The absence of any trace of a man’s 
passage on the surrounding walls of the backyard was 
very mysterious, and it was firmly established that 
the back door and the area door were secured, barred, 
and bolted from the inside. A burglar might, of 
course, have entered the house by the front door, 
which was on the latch, using a skeleton key, but it 
still remained inconceivable how he gained access into 
Mrs. Levison’s room. 

“From the first the public had felt that there was 
a background of domestic drama behind the seem¬ 
ingly purposeless crime, for it did appear purpose¬ 
less, seeing that so much portable jewellery had been 
left untouched in the safe. But it was when Ida 
Griggs, the housemaid, stood up in response to her 
name being called, that one seemed to see the cur¬ 
tain going up on the first act of a terrible tragedy. 

“Griggs was a colourless, youngish woman, with 
thin, sallow face, round blue eyes, and thin lips, and 
directly she began to speak one felt that underneath 


TRAGEDY IN BISHOP’S ROAD 


39 


her placid, old maidish manner there was an under¬ 
current of bitter spite, and even of passion. For 
some reason which probably would come to light 
later on, she appeared to have conceived a hatred 
for Mrs. Aaron; on the other hand she had obviously 
been doggedly attached to her late mistress, and in 
the evidence she dwelt on the quarrels between the 
two ladies, especially on the scene of violence that 
occurred at the dinner-table on Saturday, and which 
culminated in old Mrs. Levison flouncing out of the 
room, 

“/Mrs. Levison was that upset,’ the girl went on 
in answer to a question put to her by the coroner, 
That I thought she was going to be ill, and she says 
to me that women like Mrs. Aaron would stick at 
nothing to get a new gown or a bit of jewellery. She 
also says to me-” 

“But at this point the coroner checked her flow of 
eloquence, as of course what the dead woman had 
said could not be admitted as evidence. But, never¬ 
theless, the impression remained vividly upon the 
public that there had been a terrible quarrel between 
those two, and, of course, we all knew that young 
. Mrs. Levison had been seen at the ball, wearing those 
five diamond stars; we did not need the sworn testi¬ 
mony of several witnesses who were called and inter¬ 
rogated on that point. We knew that Rebecca 
Levison had worn the diamond stars at the bail, and 
that Police Inspector Blaekshire found them on her 
dressing-table the morning after the murder. 


o 




4 o THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

“Nor did she deny having worn them. At the in¬ 
quest she renewed the statement which she had al¬ 
ready made to the police. 

“ ‘My brother-in-law, Reuben/ she said, ‘was a 
great favourite with his mother, and when we were 
both of us ready dressed he went into Mrs. Levison’s 
room to say good-night to her. He cajoled her into 
letting me wear the diamond stars that night. In 
fact, he always could make her do anything he really 
wanted, and they parted the best of friends. 5 

“ ‘At what time did you go to the ball, Mrs. Levi¬ 
son? 5 the coroner asked. 

“ ‘My brother-in-law/ she replied, ‘went out to call 
a taxi at half-past nine, and he and I got into it the 
moment one drew up. 5 

“ ‘And Mr. Reuben Levison had been in to say 
good-night to his mother just before that? 5 

“ ‘Yes, about ten minutes before. 5 

“ ‘And he brought you the stars then? 5 the coroner 
insisted, ‘and you put them on before he went out 
to call the taxi? 5 

“For the fraction of a second Rebacca Levison 
hesitated, but I do not think that anyone in the audi¬ 
ence except myself noted that little fact. Then she 
said quite firmly: 

“ ‘Yes, Mr. Reuben Levison told me that he had 
persuaded his mother to let me wear the stars. He 
handed them to me, and I put them on. 5 

“ ‘And that was at half-past nine? 5 

“Again Rebecca Levison hesitated, this time more 
markedly; her face was very pale and she passed her 


TRAGEDY IN BISHOP’S ROAD 


4i 

tongue once or twice across her lips before she gave 
answer. 

“ ‘At about half-past nine/ she said quite steadily. 

“ ‘And about what time did you come home, Mrs. 
Levison?’ the coroner asked her blandly. 

“ ‘It must have been close on one o’clock/ she re¬ 
plied. ‘The dance was a Cinderella, but we walked 
part of the way home.’ 

“ ‘What, in the rain?’ 

“ ‘It had ceased raining when we came out of the 
town hall.’ 

“ ‘Mr. Reuben Levison did not accompany you all 
the way?’ 

“ ‘He walked with me across the park, then he put 
me into a taxicab, and I drove home alone. I had 
my latchkey.’ 

“ ‘But you failed to bolt the door after you when 
you returned. How was that?’ 

“ ‘I forgot, I suppose/ the lovely Rebecca replied 
with a defiant air. ‘I often forget to bolt the door.’ 

“ ‘And did you not see or hear anything strange 
when you came in?’ 

“ ‘I heard nothing. I was rather sleepy and went 
: straight, up to my room. I was in bed within ten 
minutes of coming in.’ 

“She was speaking quite firmly now, in a clear 
though rather harsh voice; but that she was nervous, 
not to say frightened, was very obvious. She had a 
handkerchief in her hand, with which she fidgeted 
until it was nothing but a small, wet ball, and she 
had a habit of standing first on one foot then on the 


42 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

other, and of shifting the position of her hat. I do 
not think that there was a single member of the jury 
who did not think that she was lying, and she knew 
that they thought so, for now and again her fine dark 
eyes would scrutinise their faces and dart glances at 
them either of scorn or of anxiety. 

“After a while she appeared very tired, and when 
pressed by the coroner over some trifling matter, she 
broke down and began to cry. After which she was 
allowed to stand down, and Mr. Reuben Levison was 
called. 

“I must say that I took an instinctive dislike to 
him as he stood before the jury with a jaunty air of 
complete self-possession. He had a keen yet shifty 
eye, and sharp features very like a rodent. To me 
it appeared at once that he was reciting a lesson 
rather than giving independent evidence. He stated 
that he had been present at dinner during the quarrel 
between his mother and sister-in-law, and his mother 
was certainly very angry at the moment, but later on 
he went upstairs to bid her good-night. She cried a 
little, and said some hard things, but in the end she 
gave way to him as she always did; she opened the 
safe, got out the diamond stars and gave them to 
him, making him promise to return them the very 
first thing in the morning. 

“I told her,’ Reuben went on glibly—‘that I would 
not be home until the Monday morning. I would see 
Rebecca into a taxi after the ball, but I had the in¬ 
tention of spending a couple of nights and the inter¬ 
vening Sunday with a pal who had a flat at Haver- 


TRAGEDY IN BISHOP’S ROAD 


43 

stock Hill. I thought then that my mother would 
lock the stars up again; however, she was always a 
woman of her word; once she said a thing she would 
stick to it—and so she gave me the stars, and Mrs. 
Aaron wore them that night.’ 

“ ‘And you handed the stars to Mrs. Aaron at half- 
past nine?’ 

“The coroner asked the question with the same 
earnest emphasis which he had displayed when he 
put it to young Mrs. Levison. I saw Reuben’s shifty 
eye flash across at her, and I know that she answered 
that flash with a slight drop of her eyelids. Where¬ 
upon he replied as readily as she had done: 

“ ‘Yes, sir. It must have been about half-past 
nine.’ 

“And I assure you that every intelligent person in 
that room must have felt certain that Reuben was 
lying just as Rebecca had done before him.” 

The Old Man in the Corner paused in his narra¬ 
tive. He drank half a glass of milk, smacked his lips, 
and for a few moments appeared intent on examining 
one of the complicated knots which he had made in 
his bit of string. Then, after a while, he resumed: 

“The one member of the Levison family,” he said, 
“for whom everyone felt sorry was the eldest son 
Aaron. Like most men of his race, he had been very 
fond of his mother, not because of any affection she 
may have shown him, but just because she was his 
mother. He had worked hard for.her all his life, and 
now through her death he found himself very much 
left out in the cold. It seems that by her will the old 


44 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

lady left all her savings, which it seems were consid¬ 
erable, and a certain share in the business, to Reuben ;< 
whilst to Aaron she only left the business nominally, 
with a great many charges on it in the way of pen¬ 
sions and charitable bequests, and whatever was due 
to Reuben. 

“But here I am digressing, as the matter of the 
will was not touched upon until later on, but there 
is no doubt that Aaron knew from the first that it 
would be Reuben who would primarily benefit by 
their mother’s death. Nevertheless, he did not speak 
bitterly about his brother, and nothing that he said 
could be construed into possible suspicion of Reuben. 
Seeing him there gentle, almost apologetic, trying to 
explain away everything that might in any way cast 
a reflection upon his wife’s conduct—one realised 
easily enough the man’s position in the family—a 
kind of good-natured beast of burden, who would do 
all the work and never receive a Thank you’ in re¬ 
turn. 

“He was not able to throw much light on the hor¬ 
rible tragedy. He, too, had been at the dinner-table 
when the quarrel occurred, but directly after dinner 
he had been obliged to return to the shop, it being 
Saturday night and business very brisk. He had only 
one assistant to help him, who left at nine o’clock, 
after putting up the shutters; but he himself remained 
in the shop until ten o’clock to put things away and 
make up the books. He heard the taxi being called, 
and his wife and brother going off to the ball; he was 


TRAGEDY IN BISHOP’S ROAD 45 

not quite sure as to when that was, but he dared say 
it was somewhere near half-past nine. 

“As nothing of special value had been pledged that 
day in the course of business he had no occasion to 
go and speak with his mother before going up, to 
bed, and on the whole he thought that, as she might 
still be rather sore and irritable, it would be best not 
to disturb her again. Pie did just knock at her door 
and called out ‘Good-night, mother!’ But hearing no 
reply, he thought she must already have been asleep. 

“In answer to the coroner, Aaron Levison further 
said that he had slept in the spare room at the top 
of the house for some time, as his wife was often very 
late coming home, and he did not like to have his 
night’s rest broken. He had gone up to bed at ten 
o’clock, and had neither seen nor heard anything in 
the house until six o’clock in the morning, when the 
screams of the maid down below had roused him from 
his sleep and made him jump out of bed in double- 
quick time. 

“Although Aaron’s evidence was more or less of a 
formal character, and he spoke very quietly without 
any show either of swagger or of spite, one could not 
help feeling that the elements of drama and of mys¬ 
tery connected with this remarkable case were rather 
accentuated than diminished by what he said. Thus 
one was more or less prepared for those further de¬ 
velopments which brought one’s excitement and in¬ 
terest in the case to their highest point. 

Recalled, and pressed by the coroner to try and 


46 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

memorise every event, however trifling, that occurred 
on that Saturday evening, Ida Griggs, the maid, said 
that soon after she had dropped to sleep she woke 
with the feeling that she had heard some kind of noise, 
but what it was she could not define; it might have 
been a bang, or a thud, or a scream. At the time she 
thought nothing of it, whatever it was, because while 
she lay awake for a few minutes afterwards, the house 
was absolutely still; but a moment or two later she 
certainly heard the window of Mrs. Levison 5 s room 
being thrown open. 

“ ‘There did not seem to you anything strange in 
that?’ the coroner asked her. 

“ ‘No, sir, 5 she replied. ‘There was nothing funny 
in Mrs. Levison opening her window. I remember that 
it was raining rather heavily, for I heard the patter 
against the window-panes, and Mrs. Levison may have 
wanted to look at the weather. I went to sleep di¬ 
rectly after that, and thought no more about it. 5 

“ ‘And you did not happen to glance at the clock at 
the moment? 5 

“ ‘No, sir, 5 she said, ‘I did not switch on the light. 5 

“But, having disposed of that point, Ida Griggs had 
yet another to make, and one that proved more dra¬ 
matic than anything that had gone before. 

“ ‘While I was clearing away the dinner things, 5 she 
said, ‘Mr. Reuben and Mrs. Aaron were sitting talking 
in the parlour. At half-past eight Mrs. Aaron rang for 
me to take up her hot water, as she was going to dress. 
I took up the water for her, and also for Mrs. Levison, 
as I always did. I was going to help Mrs. Levison to 


47 


TRAGEDY IN BISHOP’S ROAD 

undress, but she said she was not going to bed yet as 
she had some accounts to go through. She kept me 
talking for a bit, then, while I was with her, there was 
a knock at the door, and I heard Mr. Reuben asking 
if he might come in and say good-night. Mrs. Levi- 
son called out, “Good-night, my boy”; but she would 
not let Mr. Reuben come in, and I heard him go down¬ 
stairs again. 

“ ‘A quarter of an hour or so afterwards Mrs. Levi- 
spn dismissed me, and I heard her locking her door 
after me. I went downstairs on my way to the kitchen; 
Mrs. Aaron was in the parlour then, fully dressed, 
and with her cloak on; and Mr. Reuben was there, too, 
talking to her. The door was wide open, and I saw 
them both, and I heard Mrs. Aaron say quite spiteful 
like: “So she would not even see you, the old cat! 
She must have felt bad! ” And Mr. Reuben he laughed 
and said: “Oh, well, she will have to get over it!” 
Then they saw me, and stopped talking, and soon after¬ 
wards Mr. Reuben went out to call a taxi, and we girls 
went up to bed.’ 

“ Tt is all a wicked lie! ’ here broke in a loud, high- 
pitched voice, and Mrs. Aaron, trembling with excite¬ 
ment, jumped to her feet. ‘A lie, I say V The woman 

is spiteful, and wants to ruin me!’ 

“The coroner vainly demanded silence, and after a 
while order was restored, and Mrs. Aaron was per¬ 
suaded to go quietly out of the room. 

“But Ida Griggs did not swerve from her statement. 
She swore most positively to the conversation which 
she had overheard between Mr. Reuben and Mrs. 



48 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

Aaron in the parlour. They were both of them dressed 
for the ball then, but Ida could not swear whether 
Mrs. Aaron had the diamonds on, because she was 
wrapped up in her cloak. 

“Of course Reuben, when he was recalled, gave an 
emphatic lie to the girl’s story. It was ludicrous, he 
said, to suppose, even for a moment, that his mother 
would ever refuse to see him. He reiterated his pre¬ 
vious statement that he had gone to say good-night 
to his mother and that the old lady had let him have 
the stars for Rebecca to wear, chiefly because she 
had never denied him anything he very much wanted 
for long. 

“Soon after that Mrs. Aaron once more sailed into 
the room, looking the picture of injured innocence. 
She, too, denied most strenuously the truth of Ida 
Griggs’ statement. Old Mrs. Levison, she said, had 
let Reuben have the stars willingly, and she, Rebecca, 
had never spoken the words which Ida had attributed 
to her. In fact, she could not understand why the girl 
should tell such lies about her. 

“ ‘But there,’ she added, with tears in her beautiful 
dark eyes, ‘the girl always hated me.’ 

“Yet one more witness was heard that afternoon 
whose evidence proved of great interest. This was the 
assistant in the shop—Samuel Kutz. He could not 
thrown much light on the tragedy, because he had not 
been out of the shop from six o’clock, when he finished 
his tea, and nine, when he put up the shutters and went 
away. But he did say that while he was having his 
tea in the back parlour, old Mrs. Levison was helping 


TRAGEDY IN BISHOP S ROAD 


49 


in the front shop, and Mr. Reuben was there, too, do¬ 
ing nothing in particular, as was his custom. When 
witness went back to the shop Mrs. Levison went 
through into the back parlour, and, as soon as she had 
gone, he noticed that she had left her bag on the bureau 
behind the counter. Mr. Reuben saw it, too; he picked 
up the bag, and said with a laugh: Td best take it 
up at once; the old girl don’t like leaving this about.’ 
Kutz told him he thought Mrs. Levison was in the back 
parlour, but Mr. Reuben was sure she had since gone 
upstairs. 

u ‘Anyway/ concluded witness, ‘he took the bag and 
went upstairs with it.’ 

“This may have been a valuable piece of evidence 
or it may not,” the Old Man in the Corner went on 
with a grin. “In view of the tragedy occurring so 
much later; it did not appear so at the time. But it 
brought in an altogether fresh element of conjecture, 
and while the police asked for an adjournment pend¬ 
ing fresh inquiries, the public was left to ponder over 
the many puzzles and contradictions that the case pre¬ 
sented. Whichever line of argument one followed, one 
quickly came to a dead stop. 

“There was first of all the question whether Reuben 
Levison did cajole his mother into giving him the dia¬ 
mond stars, or whether he was peremptorily refused 
admittance to her room; but this was just a case of 
hard swearing between one party and the other; and 
here public opinion was inclined to take Reuben’s ver¬ 
sion of the story. Mrs. Levison’s affection for her 
younger son was known to all her friends, and people 


50 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

thought that Ida Griggs had lied in order to incriminate 
Mrs. Aaron. 

“But in this she entirely failed, and here was the 
first dead stop. You will remember that she said that 
after she left Mrs. Levison she went downstairs and 
saw Mrs. Aaron and Mr. Reuben fully dressed in the 
back parlour, and that afterward she heard Mr. 
Reuben call a taxi; obviously, therefore, Mrs. Aaron 
had the diamonds in her possession then, since she was 
wearing them at the ball, and it is not conceivable 
that either of those two would have gone off in the 
taxi, leaving the other to force an entrance into Mrs. 
Levison’s room, strangle her, and steal the diamonds. 
As Mrs. Aaron could not possibly had done all that in 
her evening-dress, making her way afterwards from a 
first floor window down into the yard by clinging to a 
creeper in the pouring rain, the hideous task must have 
devolved on Reuben, and even the police, wildly in 
search of a criminal, could not put the theory forward 
that a man would murder his mother in order that his 
sister-in-law might wear a few diamond stars at a ball. 

“It was, in fact, the motive of the crime that seemed 
so utterly inadequate, and therefore public argument 
fell back on the theory that Reuben had stolen the 
diamond stars just before dinner, after he had found 
his mother’s handbag in the shop, and that the subse¬ 
quent murder was the result of ordinary burglary, the 
miscreant having, during the night, entered Mrs. Levi¬ 
son’s room by the window while she was asleep. It 
was suggested that he had found the key of the safe 
by the bedside, and was in the act of ransacking the 


TRAGEDY IN BISHOP’S ROAD 


5i 

place when Mrs. Levison woke, and the inevitable 
struggle ensued resulting in the old lady’s death. The 
chief argument, however, against this theory was the 
fact that the unfortunate woman was still dressed when 
she was attacked, and no one who knew her for the 
careful, thrifty woman she was, could conceive that she 
would go fast asleep leaving the safe door wide open. 
This, coupled with the fact that not the slightest trace 
could be found anywhere in the backyard of the house, 
or the adjoining yards and walls of the passage, of a 
miscreant armed with a ladder, constituted another 
dead stop on the road of public conjecture. 

“Finally, when at the adjourned inquest Reuben 
Levison was able to bring forward more than one wit¬ 
ness who could swear that he arrived at the ball at 
the Kensington Town Hall in the company of his sis¬ 
ter-in-law somewhere about ten o’clock, and others who 
spoke to him from time to time during the evening, 
it seemed clear that he, at any rate, was innocent of 
the murder. Mr. Aaron had not gone up to bed until 
ten o’clock, and if Reuben had planned to return and 
murder his mother, he could only have done so at a 
later hour, when he was seen by several people at the 
Kensington Town Hall. 

“Subsequently, the jury returned an open verdict, 
and that abominable crime has remained unpunished 
until now. Though it appeared so simple and crude 
at first, it proved a terrible hard nut for the police to 
crack. We may say that they never did crack it. 
They are absolutely convinced that Reuben Levison 
and Mrs. Aaron planned to murder the old lady, but 


52 


THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


how they did it, no one has been able to establish. As 
for proofs of their guilt, there are none, and never will 
be, for though they are perhaps a pair of rascals, they 
are not criminals. It is not they who murdered Mrs. 
Levison.” 

“You think it was Ida Griggs?” I put in quickly, as 
the Old Man in the Corner momentarily ceased talking. 

“Ah! ” he retorted, with his funny, dry cackle. “You 
favour that theory, do you?” 

“No, I do not,” I replied. “But I don’t see-” 

“It is a foolish theory,” he went on, “not only be¬ 
cause there was absolutely no reason why Ida Griggs 
should kill her mistress—she did not rob her, nor had 
she anything to gain by Mrs. Levison’s death—but as 
she was neither a cat, nor a night moth, she could 
not possibly have ascended from a first floor window 
to another on the half-landing above, and entered her 
own room that way, for we must not lose sight of 
the fact that her bed-room door was the next morn¬ 
ing found locked on the outside, and the key left in 
the lock.” 

. “Then,” I argued, “it must have been a case of ordi¬ 
nary burglary.” 

“That has been proved impossible,” he riposted— 
“proved to the hilt. No man could have climbed up 
the wall of the house without a ladder, and no man 
could have brought a ladder into that backyard with¬ 
out leaving some trace of his passage, however slight.” 

“But some one killed old Mrs. Levison,” I went on 
with some exasperation. “She did not strangle herself 
with her own fingers.” 



TRAGEDY IN BISHOP’S ROAD 


S 3 

“No, she did not do that,” he admitted, with a dry 
laugh. 

“Well, then?” I retorted. 

“Well, then, the murder must have been committed 
by one of the inmates of the house,” he said; and now 
I knew that I was on the point of hearing the solu¬ 
tion of the mystery of the five diamond stars, because 
his thin, claw-like fingers were working with feverish 
rapidity upon his beloved bit of string. 

“But neither Mrs. Aaron,” I argued, “nor Reuben 
Levison-” 

“Neither!” he broke in decisively. “We all know 
that. Every proof, both of time and circumstance, 
both of motive and opportunity, was entirely in their 
favour. No. We must look for a deeper motive for 
the hideous crime, a stronger determination, and above 
all a more powerful physique and easier opportunity 
for carrying the plot through. Personally, I do not 
believe that there was a plot to murder; on the other 
hand, I do believe in the man who idolised his young 
wife, and had witnessed a deadly quarrel between her 
and his mother, and I do believe in his going pres¬ 
ently to the latter in order to try to soothe her anger 
against the woman he loved.” 

“You mean,” I gasped, incredulous and scornful, 
“that it was Aaron Levison?” 

“Of course I mean that,” he replied placidly. “And 
if you think over all the circumstances of the case, you 
will readily agree with me. We know that Aaron Levi¬ 
son loved and admired his wife; we know that he was 
very athletic. Bear these two facts in mind, and let 


o 



54 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

your thoughts follow the man after the terrible quarrel 
at the dinner-table. 

“For a while he is busy in the shop, probably brood¬ 
ing over his mother’s anger and the unpleasant con¬ 
sequences it might have for the lovely Rebecca. But 
presently he goes upstairs, determined to speak with 
his mother, to plead with her. He knows that the in¬ 
terview with his mother will be unpleasant, that hard 
words will be spoken against Rebecca; and dreading 
that Ida Griggs, with the habit of her kind, might sneak 
out of her room and perhaps glue her ear to the key¬ 
hole, he turns the key in the lock of the girl’s bed¬ 
room door. 

“Then he knocks at his mother’s door, and asks ad¬ 
mittance on the pretext that he has something of value 
to remit to her for keeping in her safe. She would 
have no reason to refuse. He goes in, talks to his 
mother; she does not mince her words. By now she 
knows the diamond stars have been extracted from the 
safe, stolen by her beloved Reuben for the adornment 
of the hated daughter-in-law. 

“Can’t you see those two arguing over the woman 
whom the man loves, and whom the older woman 
hates? Can’t you see the later using words which out¬ 
rage the husband’s pride and rouses his wrath till it 
gets beyond his control? Can’t you see him in an ac¬ 
cess of unreasoning passion gripping his mother by the 
throat, to smother the insults hurled at his wife? And 
can’t you see the old woman losing her balance, and 
hitting her head against the corner of the marble wash- 


TRAGEDY IN BISHOPS ROAD 


55 

stand, and falling—falling—whilst the son gazes down, 
frantic and horror-struck at what he has done? 

“Then the instinct of self-preservation is roused. 
Oh, the man was cleverer than he was given credit fori 
He remembers with satisfaction locking Ida Griggs’ 
door from the outside; and now to give the horrible 
accident the appearance of ordinary burglary! He 
locks his mother’s door on the inside, switches out the 
light, then throws open the window. For a youngish 
man, who is active and athletic, the drop from a first 
floor window, with the aid of a creeper on the wall, 
presents but little difficulty, and when a man is faced 
with a deadly peril, minor dangers do not deter him. 

“Fortunately, everything has occurred before he has 
bolted and barred the downstairs door for the night. 
This, of course, greatly facilitates matters. He lets 
himself down through the window, jumps down into 
the yard, lets himself into the house through the back 
door, then closes up everything, and quietly goes up¬ 
stairs to bed. 

“There has not been much noise, even his mother’s 
fall was practically soundless and—poor thing!—she 
had not the time to scream; the only sound was the 
opening of the window; it certainly would not bring 
Ida Griggs out of her bed; girls of her class are more 
likely to smother their heads under their bedclothes if 
any alarming noise is heard. And so the unfortunate 
man is able to sneak up to his room unseen and un¬ 
heard. 

“Whoever would dream of casting suspicion on him? 



56 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

“He was never mixed up in any quarrel with his 
mother, and he had nothing much to gain by her death. 
At the inquest every one was sorry for him; but I could 
not repress a feeling of admiration for the coolness and 
cleverness with which he obliterated every trace of his 
crime. I imagine him carefully wiping his Shoots 
before he went upstairs, and brushing and folding up 
his clothes before he went to bed. Cannot you?” the 
whimsical creature concluded, as he put his piece of 
string in the pocket of his funny tweed coat. 


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